The old adage that "blessings never come singly" was realized in the case of Murillo, for at this time he married a wealthy lady from a family of high renown, Doña Beatriz de Cobrera y Sotomayor, who dwelt at Pilas, about five leagues from Seville. It is said that he first saw her when painting an altar-piece in the Church of San Geronimo at Pilas, and portrayed her as an angel in his picture while he was winning her love.
Their married life seems to have been an eminently happy one. Their home became a centre for artists and the best social circles of the city. Three children were born to them: Gabriel, who went to the West Indies; Francisca, who became a nun; and Gaspar, afterwards a canon of Seville Cathedral.
Murillo's manner of painting changed now from what the Spanish call frio, or his cold style, to cálido, or his warm style, where the outlines were less pronounced, the figures rounder, and the coloring more luminous and tender. "The works of the new manner," says Sweetser, "are notable for graceful and well-arrayed drapery, skilfully disposed lights, harmonious tints, soft contours, and a portrait-like naturalness in the faces, lacking in idealism, but usually pure and pleasing. His flesh-tints were almost uniformly heightened by dark gray backgrounds, and were so amazingly true that one of his critics has said that they seemed to have been painted with blood and milk (con sangre y leche)."
Many of the Madonnas which Murillo painted were evidently from the same sweet, pure-faced model, and it is believed that they are the likeness of his wife. His boys were his models for the infants Jesus and John.
His first work in the so-called warm manner was "Our Lady of the Conception," a colossal picture for the Brotherhood of the True Cross. The monks were at first displeased, thinking that the finishing was not sufficiently delicate; but when Murillo caused it to be hung in the dome, for the high position for which it was intended, they were greatly delighted. Murillo, however, made them pay double the original price for their fault-finding.
"Saints Leander and Isidore," two archbishops of Seville, in the sixth and seventh centuries, who fought the Arian heresy, was his next picture, followed by the "Nativity of the Virgin,"—a much admired work,—a group of women and angels dressing the new-born Mary.
In 1656, for one of the canons of Santa Maria la Blanca, Murillo painted four large semicircular pictures, the "Immaculate Conception," where the Virgin is adored by several saints, "Faith," and two pictures, "The Dream" and "The Fulfilment," to illustrate Our Lady of the Snow, the two latter now in the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid.
According to a fourth-century legend, the Virgin appeared by night to a wealthy Roman senator and his wife, commanding them to build a church in her honor on a certain spot on the Esquiline Hill, which they would find covered with August snow. They went to Pope Liberius, and, after obtaining his blessing, accompanied by a great concourse of priests and people, sought the hill, found the miraculous snow in summer, and gave all their possessions to build the church.
One picture of Murillo represents the senator in a black velvet costume, asleep in his chair, while his wife reposes on the floor, the Madonna and Holy Child above them; the other picture shows them telling their dream to the Pope. Viardot calls these paintings the "miracles of Murillo." These were painted in the last of the three manners of Murillo, the method usually adopted in his Madonnas,—the "vapory" style, "with soft and tender outlines, velvety coloring, and shadows which are only softened lights."
In 1660, Murillo founded an academy of art in Seville, of which he was president for two years. The students were required to abstain from swearing and ill behavior, and to give assent to the following: "Praised be the most Holy Sacrament and the pure conception of our Lady."